Graphical problem ?Hardware ?Software Issue

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU 2.4GHz
RAM: 4GB
Motherboard: Asus P5K-C
Graphics Card: Nvidia 8800GT
Operating System: Windows XP SP2

Recently my computer has been unable to start, becoming locked in an endless loop of BSOD.

The problem began suddenly while playing World of Warcraft.

The computer crashed to a blue screen, I didn't record what it said at the time, as I thought it would be resolved with a restart.

Upon restarting the machine, there was wierd visual artifacts on the screen before the windows loading screen, all the BIOS information stuff was all deranged, with odd symbols, numbers are spaces where they should not be.

The windows loading screen appeared, it passed, went to a black screen for about 20 secs, then came up with a BSOD, that said the problem was caused by Nv4_DISP.DLL.

'THE DEVICE DRIVER GOT STUCK IN AN INFINITE LOOP'
'STOP: 0X000000EA'

I restarted the computer in safe mode, uninstalled the nvidia drivers, and restarted the machine, it still has the wierd visual problems when loading the bios, but windows is now graphically fine.

I downloaded the latest drivers, and proceeded to install them. Once they were installed, horizontal black lines, clustered in bands of five appeared accross the whole thing.

I restarted the machine as required by setup, and I got the same BSOD as before.

Do you think this is a software fault, or a hardware fault.

I am unsure why there would be graphical glitching in the BIOS load screen but not in windows itself.

Also, when I load windows with no GFX drivers installed, the OS cannot load any drivers for the VGA adapter i.e. the graphics card.

I would be very grateful for any advice, and If you require more information, I will happily provide.

Thanks guys

 

Boot back into "safe mode" and check your system32 files. Make sure none of your DLL files are compressed. If your files are compressed then your system is infected, or corrupted. Let me know what ya find out.

 

you can also read this article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/293078

it deals with this issue specifically.

 

Awesome, I'm gonna check those out. Ill get back to you with the results.

 

I just checked the System32 folder. None of the DLLs seem to be compressed, althought Im not 100% I could tell if they were. Does that mean they are as .zip files or something?

 

ok, the BSOD is being caused by the NVidia video card. Just google "Nvidia law suit" and you will find all the info you need on what caused your problem. I would suggest trying to go to the NVidia site and downloading the latest driver for your video card. This should fix the issue.

 

HUH?! If you're referring to the manufacturing/assembly problem that primarily affected the 8400M and related series, I don't think that has any relevance here. No amount of changing drivers would fix that problem as it was caused by poor heat transfer in a compound used in manufacturing; the only 'fix' was to flash the BIOS to a new version which forced the GPU/cooling fans to work harder (laptops) or to modify and/or add extra cooling to the graphics card in the desktop versions.


To Adam, best if this is looked into further, though the infinite loop problem may be fixed by updating drivers (a similar issue also affects ATI cards, too); this graphical artifacts you describe upon boot maybe caused by overheating or other defects of the GFX card, particularly the GPU's RAM becoming defective.

Open the PC case and physically check that the card's fan is free of any dust buildup and is freely spinning and that it does spin up to a fairly high speed on boot - I think the default setting is 100% speed at boot, dropping to about 30-35% but this behaviour may be modified in BIOS and with software to suit individual cooling or noise requirements.


Try running the PC with the case side left off for a while and a desktop fan setup close to it to force a good throughput of air.

You can monitor the GPU temps with GPU-Z.

If you have any minidumps created by BSOD's since this problem started, you could copy them to your Desktop then zip and attach them to a post.

 

Sorry about the misconecption, I would just simply implying that Nvidia in general is probably at fault

I wasn't trying to imply that his problem is directly related to the lawsuit, I was using the lawsuit as reference to how bad Nvidia sucks. Anyways, I have fixed this same issue by uninstalling and reinstalling the video driver.